In a highly productive period of just eight years, Morris Louis painted over 600 works. Inspired by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and the possibilities of Helen Frankenthaler’s Soak-Stain technique, Louis created paintings marked by both control and chance, marking a transition in art history from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism.
In the early 1950s, Morris Louis began deliberately pouring diluted acrylic resin paint onto unprimed canvas. Layer by layer, in Dalet Sin, the luminous Magna paint veil one another, overlapping and gathering at the bottom edge of the painting like a waterfall plunging into a valley. A brilliant orange and a vibrant yellow appear at the edges of this flow of colour, with traces of a powerful blue occasionally visible. Dalet Sin was created in 1958, during the height of his Veil Series, which he began in 1954.
That same year, the art critic and advocate Clement Greenberg selected 23 works from this series for Louis’ solo exhibition at the French & Company Gallery in New York. It was there that the art historian Rubin Williams, later curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, first became aware of the series. He was also the one who gave the series its name—Veil. Louis himself had never shown much interest in titling his works. He only gave titles when the works were stretched and displayed—most of these titles came from Clement Greenberg, whom Louis had asked to provide a list of possible titles, such as Curtain, Golden Age, and Iris. Louis’s reluctance to assign titles shows that narrative or representational references were of little importance to him. Titles were not meant to suggest symbolic or interpretive meanings, but to direct attention solely to the painting itself. The works follow their own internal logic of colour and surface. Dalet Sin is one of many paintings that were titled posthumously. The works of the Veil Series were titled in a random order based on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Dalet Sin combines the fourth and the twenty-first letters and serves not as a reference to content, but as a means of cataloguing.
Morris Louis (1912–1962)
Dalet Sin, 1958
Currently exhibited: Yes (Wolfgang Hollegha. Don't think, look!)
Material: Acrylic paint on canvas
Size: 223 x 359.4 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_371
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Keywords:
Sale: Lawrence Rubin Gallery, New York; Previous owner: James Pearson Duffy
